The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  I heard cheering outside. Turning, I saw through the open door that a crowd was streaming into the portico. In the middle of the throng, like battle standards, I could see the fasces of Caesar’s twenty-four lictors, and swaying above their heads the golden canopy of the Dictator’s litter. I was surprised there was no military bodyguard. Only later did I learn that Caesar had recently dismissed all those hundreds of soldiers he used to travel around with, saying, “It is better to die once by treachery than live always in fear of it.” I have often wondered if his conversation with Cicero three months earlier had anything to do with this piece of bravado. At any rate, the litter was carried across the open space and set down outside the Senate, and when his lictors helped him out of it, the crowd was able to get very close to him. They thrust petitions into his hands, which he passed immediately to an aide. He was dressed in the special purple toga embroidered with gold that he alone was permitted by the Senate to wear. He certainly looked like a king; all that was missing was the crown. And yet I could see at once that he was uneasy. He had a habit, like a bird of prey, of cocking his head this way and that, and looking about him, as if searching for some slight stirring in the undergrowth. At the sight of the open door to the chamber, he seemed to draw back. But Decimus took him by the hand, and I suppose the momentum of the occasion must also have propelled him forwards: certainly he would have lost face if he had turned round and returned home; there were already rumours that he was ill.

  His lictors cleared a path for him and in he came. He passed within three feet of me, so close I could smell the sweet and spicy scent of the oils and unguents with which he had been anointed after his bath. Decimus slipped in after him. Mark Antony was just behind Decimus, also on his way in, but Trebonius suddenly intercepted him and drew him aside.

  The Senate stood. In the silence Caesar walked down the central aisle, frowning and pensive, twirling a stylus in his right hand. A couple of scribes followed him, carrying document boxes. Cicero was in the front row, reserved for ex-consuls. Caesar did not acknowledge him, or anyone else. He was glancing back and forth, up and down, flicking that stylus between his fingers. He mounted the dais, turned to face the senators, gestured to them to be seated and lowered himself into his throne.

  Immediately various figures rose and approached him offering petitions. This was normal practice now that the debates themselves no longer mattered: they had become instead rare opportunities to give the Dictator something in person. The first to reach him—from the left, both his hands stretched out in supplication—was Tillius Cimber. He was known to be seeking a pardon for his brother, who was in exile. But instead of lifting the hem of Caesar’s toga to kiss it, he suddenly grabbed the folds of fabric around Caesar’s neck and yanked so hard on the thick material that Caesar was pulled sideways, effectively pinioned and unable to move. He shouted angrily, but his voice was half strangled so I couldn’t quite make it out. It sounded something like, “But this is violence!” A moment later, one of the Casca brothers, Publius, strode towards him from the other side and jammed a dagger into Caesar’s exposed neck. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: it was unreal—a play, a dream.

  “Casca, you villain, what are you doing?” Despite his fifty-five years, the Dictator was still a strong man. Somehow he grabbed the blade of Casca’s dagger with his left hand—he must have torn his fingers to shreds—squirmed free of Cimber’s grasp, then swung round and stabbed Casca in the arm with his stylus. Casca cried in Greek, “Help me, brother!” and an instant later his brother Gaius knifed Caesar in the ribs. The Dictator’s gasp of shock echoed round the chamber. He dropped to his knees. More than twenty toga-clad figures were now stepping up on to the dais and surrounding him. Decimus ran past me to join in. There was a frenzy of stabbing. Senators rose in their places to see what was happening. People have often asked me why none of these hundreds of men, whose fortunes Caesar had made and whose careers he had advanced, attempted to go to his aid. I cannot answer except to say that it was all so fast, so violent and so unexpected, one’s senses were stupefied.

  I could no longer see Caesar through the ring of his assailants. I was told afterwards by Cicero, who was closer than I, that by some superhuman effort he briefly regained his feet and tried to break away. But such was the force, the desperate haste and the closeness of the attack that escape was impossible. His assailants even wounded one another. Cassius knifed Brutus in the hand. Minucius Basilus stabbed Rubrius in the thigh. It is said that the Dictator’s last words were a bitter reproach to Decimus, who had tricked him into coming: “Even you?” Perhaps it is true. I wonder, though, how much speech he was capable of by then. Afterwards the doctors counted twenty-three stab wounds on his body.

  Their business done, the assassins drew back from what a moment before had been the beating heart of the empire and was now a punctured skein of flesh. Their hands were gloved in blood. Their gory daggers were held aloft. They shouted a few slogans: “Liberty!” “Peace!” “The republic!” Brutus even called out “Long live Cicero!” Then they ran down the aisle and out into the portico, their eyes staring wildly in their excitement, their togas spattered like butchers’ aprons.

  The moment they had gone, it was as if a spell had been broken. Pandemonium erupted. Senators clambered over the benches and even over one another in their panic to get away. I was almost trampled in the rush. But I was determined not to leave without Cicero. I ducked and twisted my way through the oncoming press of bodies until I reached him. He was still seated, staring at Caesar’s body, which lay entirely unattended—his slaves having fled—sprawled on its back, its feet pointed towards the base of Pompey’s statue, its head lolling over the edge of the dais, facing the door.

  I told Cicero we needed to leave, but he did not seem to hear me. He was staring at the corpse, transfixed. He murmured, “No one dares go near him, look.”

  One of the Dictator’s shoes had come off; his bare depilated legs were exposed where his toga had ridden up his thighs; his imperial purple was ragged and bloodied; there was a slash across his cheek that exposed the pale bone; his dark eyes seemed to stare, outraged, upside down, at the emptying chamber; blood ran from his wound diagonally across his forehead and dripped on to the white marble.

  All those details I see today as clearly as I saw them forty years ago, and for an instant there flashed into my mind the prophecy of the sibyl: that Rome would be ruled by three, then two, then one, and finally by none. It took an effort for me to drag my gaze away, to seize Cicero by the arm and pull him to his feet. Finally, like a sleepwalker, he allowed himself to be led from the scene, and together we made our way out into the daylight.

  The portico was in chaos. The assassins had gone, escorted by Decimus’s gladiators. No one knew their destination. People were rushing to and fro trying to find out what had happened. The Dictator’s lictors had thrown away their symbols of authority and made a run for it. The remaining senators were also leaving as fast as they could; a few had even stripped off their togas to disguise their rank and were trying to infiltrate themselves into the crowd. Meanwhile, at the far end of the portico, some of the audience from the gladiator fights in the adjacent theatre had heard the commotion and were pouring in to see what was going on.

  I sensed that Cicero was in mortal danger. Even though he’d known nothing in advance of the conspiracy, Brutus had called out his name; everyone had heard it. He was an obvious target for vengeance. Caesar’s loyalists might even assume he was the assassins’ leader. Blood would demand blood.

  I said, “We have to get you away from here.”

  To my relief, he nodded, still too stunned to argue. Our porters had fled, abandoning their litters. We had to hurry out of the portico on foot. Meanwhile the games continued oblivious. From Pompey’s theatre welled the roar of applause as the gladiators fought. One would never have guessed what had just occurred, and the more distance we put between ourselves and the portico, the more normal things seemed, so that by the time we r
eached the Carmenta Gate and entered the city it appeared to be a perfectly ordinary holiday and the assassination felt as if it had been a lurid dream.

  Nevertheless, invisible to us, along the back streets and through the markets, conveyed on running feet and in panicky whispers, the news was travelling faster than we could—so that somehow, by the time we reached the house on the Palatine, it had overtaken us, and Cicero’s brother Quintus and Atticus were already arriving from separate directions with garbled versions of what had happened. They did not know much. There had been an attack in the Senate, was all they had heard: Caesar was hurt.

  “Caesar is dead,” said Cicero, and described what we had just seen. It seemed even more fantastical in recollection than it had at the time. Both men were at first disbelieving and then overjoyed that the Dictator was slain. Atticus, normally so urbane, even performed a little skipping dance.

  Quintus said, “And you truly had no idea this was coming?”

  “None,” replied Cicero. “They must have kept it from me deliberately. I ought to be offended, but to be honest I’m relieved to have been spared the anxiety. It demanded far more nerve than I could ever have mustered. To have come to the Senate with a concealed blade, to have waited all that time, to have held one’s nerve, to have risked massacre by Caesar’s supporters, and finally to have looked the tyrant in the eye and plunged in the dagger—I don’t mind confessing I could never have done it.”

  Quintus said, “I could!”

  Cicero laughed. “Well, you’re more used to blood than I am.”

  “And yet do none of you feel any sorrow for Caesar, simply as a man?” I asked. “After all,” I said to Cicero, “it’s only three months since you were laughing with him over dinner.”

  Cicero looked at me with incredulity. “I’m amazed that you should ask me that. I imagine I feel as you must have felt on the day you received your freedom. Whether Caesar was a kind master or a cruel one is neither here nor there—master he was, and slaves was what he made us. And now we have been liberated. So let’s have no talk of sorrow.”

  He sent out a secretary to see if he could discover the whereabouts of Brutus and the other conspirators. The man came back soon afterwards and reported that they were said to be occupying the upper ground of the Capitol.

  Cicero said, “I must go at once and offer my support.”

  “Is that wise?” I asked. “As things stand, you bear no responsibility for the killing. But if you go and show your solidarity with them in public, Caesar’s supporters may not see much difference between you and Cassius and Brutus.”

  “Let them. I intend to thank the men who’ve given me back my liberty.”

  The others agreed and we set off at once, all four of us, with a few slaves for protection—along the slope of the Palatine, down the steps into the valley and across the road of Jugarius to the foot of the Tarpeian Rock. The air was eerily still and torpid with an approaching storm; the thoroughfare, normally busy with ox carts, was deserted apart from a few people wandering in the direction of the Forum. Their expressions were stunned, bewildered, fearful. And certainly if one sought for portents one had only to glance up at the sky. Massy dense black clouds seemed to be pressing down upon the roofs of the temples, and as we began to climb the steep flight of steps there was a flash and a crack of thunder. The rain was cold and heavy. The stones became slippery. We had to pause halfway to recover our breath. Beside us a stream ran over the green mossy rock and turned into a waterfall; below us I could see the curve of the Tiber, the city walls, the Field of Mars. I realised then how shrewd a piece of military planning it had been to retire straight from the scene of the assassination to the Capitol: its sheer cliffs made it a naturally impregnable fortress.

  We pressed on until we came to the gate at the summit, which was guarded by gladiators, fearsome-looking characters from Nearer Gaul. With them was one of Decimus’s officers. He recognised Cicero and ordered the men to admit us, then he conducted us himself into the walled compound, past the chained dogs that guarded the place at night, and into the Temple of Jupiter, where at least a hundred men were gathered, sheltering in the gloom from the rain.

  As Cicero entered he was greeted with applause and he went round shaking hands with all of the assassins apart from Brutus, whose hand was bandaged because of the wound Cassius had accidentally inflicted on him. They had changed out of their bloodied clothes into freshly laundered togas, and their demeanour was sober, even grim, with nothing left of the euphoria that had immediately followed the killing. I was amazed to see how many of Caesar’s closest followers had rushed to join them: L. Cornelius Cinna, for example, the brother of Caesar’s first wife and uncle of Julia—Caesar had recently made him praetor, yet here he was with his ex-brother-in-law’s murderers. And here too was Dolabella—the ever-faithless Dolabella—who had raised not a finger to defend Caesar in the Senate chamber, and who now had his arm round the shoulder of Decimus, the man who had lured their old chief to his doom. He came over to join in the conversation that Cicero was having with Brutus and Cassius.

  Brutus said, “So you approve of what we have done?”

  “Approve? It’s the greatest deed in the history of the republic! But tell me,” asked Cicero, with a glance around the sombre interior, “why are you all cooped up here out of sight like criminals? Why aren’t you down in the Forum rallying the people to your cause?”

  “We are patriots, not demagogues. Our aim was to remove the tyrant, nothing more.”

  Cicero stared at him in surprise. “But then who is running the country?”

  Brutus said, “At the moment, no one. The next step is to establish a new government.”

  “Shouldn’t you simply declare yourselves to be the government?”

  “That would be illegal. We didn’t pull down a tyrant in order to set ourselves up as tyrants in his place.”

  “Well then summon the Senate here now, to this temple—you have the power as praetors—and let the Senate declare a state of emergency until elections can be held. That would be entirely legal.”

  “We think it would be more constitutional if Mark Antony, as consul, summoned the Senate.”

  “Mark Antony?” Cicero’s surprise was turning to alarm. “You mustn’t let him anywhere near this business. He has all of Caesar’s worst qualities and none of his best.” He appealed to Cassius to back him up.

  Cassius said, “I agree with you. In my view we should have killed him at the same time as we killed Caesar. But Brutus wouldn’t tolerate it. Therefore Trebonius delayed him on his way in to the chamber, so that he could get away.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “Presumably in his house.”

  “That I would doubt, knowing him,” said Dolabella. “He will be busy in the city.”

  Throughout these exchanges I had noticed Decimus talking to a couple of his gladiators. Now he hurried across, his expression grim. He said, “There’s a report that Lepidus is moving his legion off Tiber Island.”

  Cassius said, “We’ll be able to see for ourselves from here.”

  We went outside and followed Cassius and Decimus around the side of the great temple to the raised paved area to the north that gives a view for miles over the Field of Mars and beyond. And there was no doubt of it: the legionaries were marching across the bridge and forming up on the riverbank nearest the city.

  Brutus betrayed his anxiety by a constant tapping of his foot. He said, “I sent a messenger to Lepidus hours ago but he hasn’t returned an answer.”

  Cassius pointed. “That’s his answer.”

  Cicero said, “Brutus, I implore you—I implore you all—go down to the Forum and tell the people what you’ve done and why you’ve done it. Fire them with the spirit of the old republic. Otherwise Lepidus will trap you up here and Antony will take control of the city.”

  Even Brutus could now see the wisdom of this, and so a procession of the conspirators—or assassins, or freedom fighters, or liberators: no one ever
could agree exactly what to call them—descended the twisting road that led from the summit of the Capitol around behind the Temple of Saturn and down into the Forum. At Cicero’s suggestion they left their bodyguard of gladiators behind: “It will make the best possible impression of our sincerity if we walk alone and unarmed; besides, if there is trouble, we can retreat quickly enough.”

  It had stopped raining. Three or four hundred citizens had gathered in the Forum and were standing around listlessly among the puddles, apparently waiting for something to happen. They saw us coming when we were still quite a long way off, and moved towards us. I had no idea how they would react. Caesar had always been a great favourite of the mob, although latterly even they had come to weary of his kingly ways—to dread his looming wars and to pine for the old days of elections when they had to be courted by the dozens of candidates with flattery and bribes. Would they applaud us or try to tear us apart? In the event they did neither. The crowd watched in absolute silence as we entered the Forum and then parted to let us pass. The praetors—Brutus, Cassius and Cinna—went up on to the rostra to address them, while the rest of us, including Cicero, stood at the side to watch.

  Brutus spoke first, and although I can remember his sombre opening line—“As my noble ancestor Junius Brutus drove the tyrant-king Tarquin from the city, so today have I rid us of the tyrant-dictator Caesar”—the rest of it I have forgotten. That was the problem. He had obviously laboured hard over it for days, and no doubt as an essay on the wickedness of despotism it read well. But as Cicero had long tried to convince him, a speech is a performance, not a philosophical discourse: it must appeal to the emotions more than to the intellect. A fiery oration at that moment might have transformed the situation—might have inspired the crowd to defend the Forum and their liberty from the soldiers who even now were massing on the Field of Mars. But Brutus gave them a lecture that was three parts history to one part political theory. I could hear Cicero beside me muttering under his breath. It did not help that while he was speaking, Brutus’s wound began to bleed beneath its bandage; one was distracted from what he was saying by that gory reminder of what he had done.